Reviews by kuvien

Like most people, I discovered Rodriguez through the documentary, Searching for Sugar Man. Well, technically, I discovered him on some RYM list, but that dude clearly found him because of the documentary. Anyway, I really dig this album. It’s not quite as good as Rodriguez’ debut, but it’s still a damn fine honest album. I can’t help but compare Rodriguez to Springsteen, for he succeeds—in my estimation—where the Boss fails. Rodriguez is more poetic and more convincing. He strikes me as the actual man of the people, due in no small part to his obscurity. By the way, the album cover always intrigues me...whose shoe is that, and why is there only one?

What a beautiful collection of melancholic songs! Quite a cathartic journey, whether you just listen or take the time to call up the lyrics. I envy the Portuguese for possessing a national treasure such as Rodrigues. Loneliness amid the beauty of spring, fear wrapped up in the comfort of sleep, regret dwelling somewhere between the mountain and the sea, and the lover always so far away as to be unreachable...all sung with matchless vocal interpretation.

This has a real Old World feel, something to connect to emotionally if not intellectually. Rodrigues has a voice so rich and authentic that I can understand why Portugal considered her a national treasure and why when a voice like this passes a president would declare three days of national mourning. The sparse stringed accompaniment showcases the whole point of this album: the voice.

Porter traded his delicate, beautiful innocence to be the lame life of the lame party where you drop the F Bomb and make the braindead crowd raise their plastic cups and go wooo!

I feel like Roberts, here on her debut, is trying to figure out what kind of music she wants to make. Being the genius she is, she's got a lot going on this album. It hardly compares to her Coin Coin epics later on, but this is an interesting and varied jazz effort. I like almost everything Roberts has put her hand to, and this is no different. One thing Roberts does well is create an atmosphere and encourage her players to join her, teasing the listener as she leaves you hanging in anticipation, wrapping you in the textures woven by her alto sax and that sometimes bright sometimes groaning guitar. Are the horns supposed to be two birds carrying on a conversation in their house? Like, are they roommates? siblings? a married couple?

for my next improvisation
The Agony in the Garden
...I know Jesus loves me
I mean, I don't particularly love Him
but I know He loves me
laughter

Unquiet spirits tossed on the tides of cruelty sing at variance with the wild, whirling cacophony raging all around them, falling silent only when the storyteller recites her memories, her string of consciousness poetry. And then the spirits, too, remember their hard lives, the sharecropping, the snatches of field songs and gospel tunes, of how Daddy and Mama died on the same day, one in the morning, the other in the evening. The spirits remember, and when the storyteller's poetry turns to song, they find their voices again, and like a guide, she leads them into a harmony, to a garden where even the sparrows are watched over by the Almighty, where at last they can be happy... and free.

This chapter is utterly unlike the rest of the Coin Coin project in that there is very little if any jazz presence. Instead we get a palimpsest of the spoken word amid a wash of droning, the reading of slavers' journals, and a general sense of a hopeless and helpless descent into madness, where lullabies cannot soothe your children's jagged wails. This is the naked horror of the transatlantic slave trade.

This album starts as a paradox, namely as a beautiful cacophony, and the vocals, strong yet broken, rise perfectly out of this sonic storm. Then the violins soar, evoking more familiar emotions and granting the much-needed respite from the opening tempest. There follows a powerful a capella rendition of a slave auction, with all its attendant sexual callousness (the upright bass lead-in is perfect, providing the backbone to the auction bidding chant breakdown). The music swirls on into mournful violins, the sound of a lonely buoy bell, and eerie voices singing in...not-English, giving a strong sense of bondage in a foreign land and the mourning that would come with such an uprooting. This calm doesn't last long, though, for the narrative descends into frightening vocal territory with harrowing cries and groans. The rhythm and phrasing become more tribal in feel. We find out why she cries when she tells the story of her having to buy her own children out of bondage. This avant-garde spiritual jazz is also conscious jazz taking a brutally honest look at history.

The jazz poetry embedded in this improvisational mix is a brilliant, scathing meditation on racism in America, while fiddles are tormented to cry, where the jaw harp sets the introspective tone. She is a child of the wind. The snatches of hymns and spirituals gut me, the juxtaposition of hope against cruelty being nothing more than malicious mockery. Run, baby, run like the wind! The long, sweaty draws of the trombone as long as the road she must run, as hot as the sticky, southern air beneath an unrelenting sun. Run to "heaven", that poplar tree we know about. Memory is a most unusual thing.

Thank God Matana exists, to give voices to the voiceless and names to the nameless. To remember the forgotten and exalt the downtrodden.

Yeah, it's good, but it's an artifact. Good to listen to once, go "yeah all right so that's what was big back then" and then move on.

Released just under four years before the signing of the Civil Rights Act in the US, this album in no way hides its message--it's right there in the title. As an overview of Black history in America, from the dark nights of slavery right up to the dark nights of the civil rights struggle, music was always central to the suffering of a people who knew more than their fair share of degradation, and jazz became, in my opinion, tied for the greatest expressive voice in the fight (the other is folk). Take a moment, dear listener, to look at what is happening in the photograph on the album cover. Segregation... and that smug look on the bartender's face. Kinda makes you wanna scream. Well, spin this and hear the cries of Abbey Lincoln--sometimes melodious, sometimes screeching--for justice!

You'd have to be some kind of idiot to not understand that this album is a direct reference to the Civil Rights struggle of the 50s and 60s, specifically the assassination of MLK, Jr. This album was recorded only three to four months after the leader's murder. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, but if anyone thought that was the end of the fight, they were sadly mistaken or woefully naive. This Afrofuturism-adjacent album (it's Afro, but it's not futuristic) draws upon the spiritual heritage of Black culture in America, especially the music, and especially the admonition to "keep your lamps trimmed and burning". Be always in a state of readiness. And just like the tumult of the times, Roach embraces that sense of adventure by riding the line between established modal jazz improvisations and the brand-new complexities of post-bop.

A sweet little, stripped-down album with just a woman, her voice, and her dulcimer.

Take a healthy bit of piano minimalism and add some touches of post-rock crescendo sensibility, and you get avant big band jazz performances whose strength is in the anticipation, not the destination. Like ancient stone monoliths rooted in the earth and stretching to the stars, this 10-piece ensemble helps Risser express mystical experiences.

[https://media1.tenor.com/m/hKciaOR8678AAAAC/mark-whalberg.gif,too much kfc and bud]

"In" is not capitalized in a title (or a band name). One star.

Ribot plays a bad-ass guitar and has done extensive session work on Costello, Waits, and Zorn albums, but here he gets away from his No Wave tendencies and goes for something more laidback. Six of the ten tracks on this album are the compositions of Arsenio Rodríguez, a Cuban musician and bandleader who died nearly 30 years before this album was made.

I read someone calling Ribeiro's style "declamatory". Yeah, that's a good way to describe it. And I love her style. To me, it's also almost religious, one of those voices where you feel like you're listening on sacred ground, or perhaps sacred space, since this album blasts off into strange realms beyond folk. Side B is one long poem set to music, a poem in which the narrator is courted by Death, accepts its embrace by killing herself, only to find that the afterlife is just like here: full of war and injustice. The narrator therefore begs Death to send her back to earth so she can enjoy all its pleasures.